The present invention relates to the field of wireless mobile devices and software applications installed thereon. More particularly, the present invention relates to monitoring performance of such devices and software applications.
According to a study by Equation Research, slow performance is the top complaint users have with mobile device applications.
Performance of a website can be analyzed by monitoring the network delay associated with loading web pages and comparing the average delay to that of other websites. A percentile can then be reported that helps website developers determine how their website performs compared to other websites. Companies such as New Relic provide website monitoring services. Such website performance monitoring services, however, are not readily applicable to monitoring performance of mobile applications.
In an attempt to address the issue of slow performance of mobile applications, Compuware offers a solution that allows mobile application developers to manually configure their mobile applications to measure wait times by manually indicating the beginning and end of sections of mobile application code for which wait time is to be measured. Reporting the wait time helps mobile application developers identify portions of their application code that require optimization. It can, however, be time-consuming and cumbersome to initially configure an application to obtain these measurements and to maintain the application on an ongoing basis as changes are made to the application.
What is needed, therefore, are improved techniques for monitoring performance of mobile applications.